In this second video, we build on the Node.js + Express skills learned in the first video, and create a fun social web app that demonstrates how you can totally separate your application’s UI from its underlying API by using Express’s ability to mount one application inside another. This isn’t only about keeping your code tidy: it also enables some dramatic performance benefits, as you’ll see in Part 3, and means you could easily attach multiple UI technologies to the same underlying backend.

OK, here’s the video. Be sure to watch it full-screen in 720p quality, by the way, for the most readable code…

Want to download the code?

If you want to get a closer look at the code created in this tutorial, you can download the version corresponding to the end of part 2, or <a href=”https://github.com/SteveSanderson/nodejs-webmatrix-video-tutorials” onclick=”javascript:_gaq.push([‘_trackEvent’,’outbound-article’,’http://github.com’]);” target=_blank>browse the whole source repo on GitHub</a>.

I’m sure by now everyone has heard plenty about Node.js, the lightweight JavaScript-on-the-server web platform. But maybe you’ve been putting off trying it out because it’s unclear what exactly to download and install on Windows to get the best development experience.